Dating back to the mid 1980's many hip-hoppers have recorded Christmas/Holiday Season songs including the Treacherous Three's "Santas Rap" from the 1984 hip-hop film Beat Street (scroll down to see video clip below),and of course the truly classicRun DMCChristmas song from 1987 that still gets much play to this day - "Christmas In Hollis" with that memorable opening "It was December 24th on Hollis Ave in the dark when I seen a man chilling with his dog in the park." To me what makes this Run DMC song such a perfect timeless Christmas classic is that it both managed to maintain that distinct Run DMC rap flavor but also had the perfect Christmas vibe to it. This it achieved with the bells ringing throughout and also how the track nicely worked into its urban Xmas tale such traditional Christmas song melodies as "Frosty The Snowman. The Run DMC song appeared on both the original A Very Special Christmas various artists/genres compilation and on the Profile Records all hip-hop holiday 1987 compilation Christmas Rap that also featured such rappers as Sweet Tee, King Sun, Spyder-D, and Dana Dane all busting out Christmas raps.

For this holiday occasion here are four hip-hop Christmas songs/videos to celebrate the day. Two of them are old school 1980's flashbacks:Run DMC's 1987 Christmas classic (of all genres) "Christmas In Hollis," and the and "Santa's Rap" from the 1984 hip-hop movie Beat Street by The Treacherous Three andDoug E. Fresh. Note that is not the album version but the original film version of the song and hence a little more explicit (better too).

Meanwhile the two new 2012 Christmas rap/hip-hop songs, which are both a bit more cynical than their 80's rap predecessors are from Duck Down Music's Sean Price (the animated "How Sean Price Stole Christmas") and KRS-One (featuring Mad Lion and Shinehead) and the great new song/video "Holiday Gift Style." Happy Hip-Hop Holidayz!

Thanks to Ray Ricky Rivera at Amoeba Hollywood for this week's Hip-Hop Top Five chart at the Los Angeles Amoeba store. It includes many of the recent new releases that have been doing well at the other two Amoebas and beyond: Kanye West, Cee Lo Green, Nicki Minaj, and Curren$y. It also includes the brand new DIddy-Dirty Money album, Last Train To Paris, which the artist/rap impresario once known as Puff Daddy said took three years to make and described its sound as "electro-hip-hop-soul funk." In a press release, Diddy said that for this more dance club sounding album he was influenced "by being in the dance music world and doing stuff with Felix da Housecat, Erick Morillo, Deep Dish, DJ Hell and being in Ibiza and DC10," in reference to the big nightclub on the island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean. Despite themselves, many Diddy haters will find this album infectious since it is filled with irresistibly catchy choruses. Of course, being the wise overseer / producer he is, Diddy only did part of the real work on this album; he shrewdly enlisted the talents of others to accomplish his musical goals.